Corrections of Interest by Baynard Woods

> Last week, Conflicts of Interest began with an error, when I misspelled my friend Dan Pavlik’s name. The error made it through fact checking and copy editing. Then I saw it again as I…

Under Siege by Baynard Woods

The Apocalypse comes at 6 p.m. By Georgi Gospodinov Directed by Genevieve de Mahy Through June 29 at Single Carrot Theatre Back in 2002, when the so-called “Beltway snipers” we…

Kick the Can by Baynard Woods

“Slick Ass” Dan Pavlick was having a bad night. In his first round of kick the can, all four of Pavlick’s beer cans had skittered across the wooden floor of the practice space and mere…

Kaspar by Baynard Woods

The acquisition of language is one of the great philosophical problems: It is impossible to go from not having it to having it without presupposing it. Think of the stereotypical cave man gr…

Hilarity Ensues by Geoffrey Himes

WILD WITH HAPPY By Colman Domingo through June 29 At Center Stage There’s a scene early in Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy at Center Stage where the protagonist, a 40-…

The Abuse of Beauty by Maura Callahan

Ed Lieberman Through June 30 at Gallery 1301 Charles Bukowski wrote “To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing …

That's OK, We'll Wing it by Joe Macleod

New York improv troupe The Tenderloins have been hammering out comedy via long-form improv, stand-up, and sketches since 1999. In 2011 they scored big with hidden-camera/improv/comedy/compet…

Member of the Tribe by Evan Serpick

Sylvia is going deaf. And she’s not happy about it. “You don’t know what it’s like going deaf! You don’t!” she says to Billy, who was born deaf and reads lips. She begins to …

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

With Deathfest—and the parasitical Deathscape—a couple weeks ago, the season of fests has kicked off. We usually count Transmodern the beginning of the season, but organizer Laure Drogou…

Cultural Revolution by Shannon Gormley

Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy By Guo Tai Gong Directed by Evan Moritz Through June 8 at Annex Theater A baby has already been thrown off a cliff, and the play has hardly begu…

Controlled Burn by Bret McCabe

Bessma Khalaf: Yes, Even You At Gallery Four through June 7. A beach at sunset is a chill sight to behold. Waves roll in, and the only music that floats into the ears is their gentle r…

Hot Fudge Wednesdays by Lexie Mountain

It is times like these, times when I am sandwiched between a low ceiling and a 6800 gallon tank of salt water on a metal railing less than a foot wide with no clear way to escape, that I won…

The Grand Tour by Maura Callahan

I am standing in front of the Florence cathedral, the grand canal of Venice, the Vatican. I gawk for maybe five seconds before submitting to the all-too-common photographic impulse, snapping…

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

A couple weeks ago, we had a little disagreement with our friends down at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Or rather, I thought all of the celebrations of the certainly meritorious Fre…

Wild Child by John Barry

Experimental theater has a reputation for being unfriendly, if not downright hostile, toward the audience, but Baltimore’s Lola Pierson has been trying to turn that characterization on its…

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

Evan Moritz of Annex Theater recalls a conversation with Ryan Haase of Stillpointe Theatre. “Ryan Haase came up to me one night and he was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be awesome if the old vaud…

The Russians Aren’t Coming by John Barry

Things in Russia have changed so much during the five years Yury Urnov has spent in Baltimore that he jokes it feels more like 350 years. When he first arrived in 2009, he worked with the Ce…

National Identity by Bret McCabe

Atlanta-based photographer Shelia Pree Bright remembers what it felt like when people let her know she was in some way different from them. A self-described Army brat, in the 1970s her fathe…

Object Envy by Michael Farley

In Baltimore’s art scene, we’re accustomed to viewing dainty, craft-inspired artwork in former auto-body shops, looking at delicate paintings in filthy warehouses, and encountering conce…

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

Russell De Ocampo, the owner of the Windup Space, accidentally told City Paper photographer J.M. Giordano that he could photograph Chris LaMartina, the director of Call Girl of Cthulhu, for …

Stage Review: Sweeney Todd by Bret McCabe

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Words and music by Stephen Sondheim; book by Hugh Wheeler Directed by Ryan Haase Presented by Stillpointe Theatre Initiative at Area 405 thr…

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

Many of the galleries and performance spaces in and around the Copycat Building took part in “Alloverstreet” last weekend. I stopped into the extraordinarily white and bright Springsteen…

Stage Review: Chronotony by Bret McCabe

“I love thinking about time in a trippy way and what it means to be outside of time,” says Connor Kizer by way of introducing the ideas percolating through his new play, Chronotony, whic…

Stage Review: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Geoffrey Himes

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by Christopher Durang Directed by Eric Rosen Through May 25 At Center Stage Anton Chekhov thought of his plays as comedies, while Konstantin Stani…

Stage Review: The Diary of Dan Franke by Evan Serpick

In late 1999, just before the Y2K disaster, I made a terrible mistake. On a shoestring trip to Europe, I drank some mushroom-laced tea and went to Amsterdam’s Anne Frank Museum. My fri…

Stage Review: By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Bret McCabe

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark By Lynn Nottage Directed by Walter Dallas Through May 11 at Everyman Theatre Vera Stark (Dawn Ursula) is doing that thing she swore she’d never do: …

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

In 2012, we gave Sun columnist and WYPR host Dan Rodricks “Best Stepping In It” for his coverage of pit bulls. We misspelled his name on the certificate we mailed him. It came back, ripp…

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? by Geoffrey Himes

Pete Ross says that a survey of printed material in the United States between the 1730s and the 1830s turns up 58 different references to the banjo—and 57 of those citations describe the i…

Conflicts of Interest by Baynard Woods

This column used to be called “Art Seen,” but last week we had the headline “Conflicts of Interest” and we liked it better, so that’s the new name. And though there won’t always …

The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret by Bret McCabe

The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret Written by Mariah MacCarthy Directed by Susan Stroupe Presented by Glass Mind Theatre at Gallery 788 through April 19 At some point in Glass M…

Art Seen by Baynard Woods